Japanese Patent Publication No. 1997-56747A discloses a pants-type disposable wearing article comprising a liquid-pervious inner sheet facing a wearer's body, a liquid-impervious outer sheet facing away from the wearer's body and a liquid-absorbent core interposed between these inner and outer sheets. These inner and outer sheets are joined together in the vicinity of transversely opposite side edge portions of front and rear waist regions at a plurality of heat-sealing sites arranged intermittently in the longitudinal direction so as to form a waist-hole and a pair of leg-holes lying below the waist-hole.
In this wearing article, a plurality of elastic members are attached in a stretched state to a waist-hole's peripheral edge portion in a waist-surrounding direction and to leg-hole's peripheral edge portions in a thigh-surrounding direction, respectively. The thigh-surrounding elastic members are secured to respective inner surfaces of the inner and outer sheets by means of a hot melt adhesive. The waist-surrounding elastic members are sideways arranged between the waist-hole and the leg-holes, being spaced one from another by a dimension given in the longitudinal direction. In a core-free area of the front waist region, the waist-surrounding elastic members are secured to the respective inner surfaces of the inner and outer sheets by means of a hot melt adhesive. In the core-occupied area of the front waist region, the waist-surrounding elastic members are secured to the inner surface of the outer sheet by means of a hot melt adhesive.
In this wearing article, a spacing at which the waist-surrounding elastic members are arranged in the vicinity of the core's longitudinally opposite ends is smaller than the corresponding spacing in the other area of the core so that the wearing article can be reliably put in close contact with the wearer's body in the vicinity of the longitudinally opposite ends of the core and a leakage of bodily discharges possibly occurring in the vicinity of the core's ends can be reliably prevented.
In the wearing article disclosed in the above-cited Publication, a plurality of fine gathers are formed on the inner and outer sheets in the core-free area as well as the outer sheet in the core-occupied area when the waist-surrounding elastic members contract in the waist-surrounding direction. In this wearing article, these fine gathers may not only deteriorate touch as well as appearance of the inner and outer sheets but also distort a picture or a geometric pattern depicted as a fancy element on the outer surface of the outer sheet as much as the fancy element can not be distinctly recognized.
It is an object of this invention to provide a pants-type disposable wearing article improved so that a plurality of fine gathers may not be formed in a generally middle zone of a front waist region at least and an fancy element depicted in the front waist region may be distinctly recognized.